


Night's Uncertainties

by Runespoor



Category: Disney - Fandom, Lion King (1994)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-11
Updated: 2010-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At this point, Nala knows help can only come from the outside. Human AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night's Uncertainties

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. My name is Runespoor. Since _The Lion King_ was first released, I have not gone ten days without quoting it. The better part of the dialogue has been liberally lifted from the movie. For the lj comm au_bingo, theme 'Other: Animals (anthropomorphic or not)'. Title from _Can You Feel The Love Tonight_.

Night is falling when Nala enters the fair. The circus is old and eerily quiet, and if the posters stuck on wooden fences didn't claim that a show had taken place only three weeks ago, her first thought would probably be that it's abandoned. Not entirely, of course; the last decade has made her more than a little familiar with abandonment, and this place isn't it.

It's ironic, that an old, run-down circus feels more homey, less decrepit than home. It's really ironic that she's looking for help here, of all places. If her parents could see her...

She chooses to consider it a favorable omen. Last place on earth anyone would go looking for her or for anything else. Given how things have turned out, help can only come from this sort of place. She's gone to the fringe looking for outsiders, help can only come from the outside now.

But even then, Nala advances cautiously in the deep shadows and bright plastics of her surroundings. It's not-- she can't expect to be welcomed here. She doesn't belong. And she's not the little girl who played at scaring herself anymore, she can take care of herself – and then some – but still. Not home.

Home hasn't existed in a long long time, so she's used to cautiousness. Cautiousness, and skill, and violence when a hand falls on her shoulder.

"Who are--"

The man cuts himself off with a shout when she grabs his arm, yanks, and flings him over her shoulder. His body slams heavily into the ground, in an instant Nala's got her gun pointed at him.

"Police, don't--" she starts.

"Pumbaa?" another voice – male again – calls, loud and clear, too carefree to have heard what's happening. "You there? Pumbaa, are you—oh my god."

"Don't move or I shoot him," Nala tells the new guy. This one is scrawny and looks exactly the kind of agitated that--

"Yeah sure why not HEEELP A LITTLE HELP OVER HERE."

Just about the only thing keeping her from shooting Scrawny isn't her quickly fraying temper, it's first-hand knowledge that getting into a stand-off with some excited twerp bleeding and yelling on the ground isn't conducive to anything except more shooting. That, and she doesn't have an unlimited amount of bullets.

And Nala's not that kind of cop.

"HEEEEEELP!"

That's a really obnoxiously effective pair of lungs, right there, and Nala's got half a mind to snap at Scrawny to shut the hell up, except that his shouts are already echoing all around the place. Whatever backup these guys have got, they've definitely heard.

Alone in an old carny place with her opponents' back-up on the way. At least she knows they're not mafia. Probably small-time drug runners, and she can take those easily.

Complacency: still everyone's worst enemy. She has no sooner congratulated herself that nothing this out-of-the-way backwater place throws at her can beat her that someone rams into her. She doesn't go flying, only because she's very very good at expecting attacks from the most unlikely directions any time any place especially when you think you're safe - who'd have thought expecting your partners to shoot you in the back would come useful?

And it is on.

The fight's vicious, fast-paced, makes her snarl rather than shout. A kick she almost doesn't see coming and she can only block with her forearm, a punch she lands straight on his jaw but that still doesn't make him fall, everything's around blurry.

She's only fuzzily aware of the two guys shouting – knows in her bones they're encouraging their buddy – her blood's singing in her temples. Guy's good. She catches glimpses between the sharp jabs of the battle, her age, and long dyed hair whipping, damn, guy knows how to fight.

Not as good as her, though, not as trained. Not used to brawling for more than a couple of minutes, where Nala's taught herself that if she takes a fight to the ground she's gonna lose, badly, maybe more than just the fight. All kinds of unexpected advantages Scar's running of the police force forced in her, right, all sorts of edges she's had to bloom. Scar's blind eye to his favorites means that Nala's more than a little acquainted with playing dirty and fighting to survive.

After two minutes the guy slips and she gets him down, blocks his hips and wrists with her knees and the hook of her legs, and shoves his shoulders to the ground, pinning him.

Fucker doesn't stop growling, she's gonna sock him another one, disarmed suspect or not, she thinks as she pants through gritted teeth – he made every strike count – and then he stops growling and he blinks at her and he calls her by her name.

"Nala?"

She didn't expect _that_, and it feels like her heart freezes for a moment, because the absolute last thing she needs is to run into one of Scar's spies, and who else in that kind of place would call her by her name?

Switching to plan B, very quickly and as gracefully as she possibly can she slides off the guy, takes a few steps back and assumes a position that isn't threatening in any dictionary, hands demurely hooked behind her back.

Two inches away from her gun, roughly. Because there's putting on a credible bluff and there's being suicidally stupid. Scar's not out to kill her, she hasn't been gone long enough to raise that kind of alarms, but better safe than sorry.

"You don't recognize me?"

And no, whoever this is, she doesn't. "Who are you?"

And at the same time, she's searching her mind, because there's something-- there's something in the way he looks at her, it's in his eyes, she's sure it's in his eyes, who does she know with this wide wide eyed expression...

"Nala, it's me, Simba!"

"Simba?"

His lips curve in a bit of an uncertain smile, and in a flash it all comes back to her.

Before she knows it she's thrown herself at him, clinging to him with a fierce hug, her arms wrapped around his neck, and he's whirling her round. Loud, excited squeals fill the air – half are hers, the other half are Simba's voice, lower and more grown-up than she ever thought she'd hear him, and none make the slightest bit of sense.

"I thought you were--"

"I never thought you'd--"

"so happy to see--"

"amazing, can't believe--"

Over ten years of guilt and anguish pour out of her unnoticed and transparent like they've never happened, leaving her giddy and lighter than she's been in years, since-- he's alive, Simba's alive, and if he's alive that means nothing is impossible, Scar hasn't won, it's not over, not over, not over, Simba's alive. She doesn't even listen when they stop – they have to stop, one of the others interrupt them – and Simba introduces them as his friends. She barely pays attention when she realizes that he hasn't told them about who he is.

It smacks something uneasy in her that spreads and stays dormant until they're alone.

Simba shows her around the nooks and corners of the old amusement park with as much pride as if it were his father's house, and better knowledge of the place's tricks than she can remember him ever possessing during their childhood.

Each step they take, it seems, bring its own secrets, treasure-like things an outsider such as her would never suspect.

Every time he reveals one to her, his face lights up, like gold is shining in the sun. He doesn't reminisce aloud – not much, anyway – but Nala can guess at the decade worth of memories in the tidbits he lets through. There's first-hand experience fueling the knowledge that 'careful, the ledge's real slippery when it's been raining', and 'from here, you can see the most amazing rainbows' means that it's one of his favorite spots.

Through Simba's eyes and words, she sees the place as more than a ruined paradise, infected by his enthusiasm. It's always been like that, with him. All their best worst ideas were his, and Nala always went along with his crazy whims, honing them without realizing into crazier schemes that got them into more trouble than each of them could've got into on their own.

Simba's always been fun. That hasn't changed.

And she wishes she could spend more time laughing it up with him, delighting in the way years seem to fall down her shoulders as he speaks, but the timer's never stopped turning. And Simba may not have changed, but she has. Has had no other choice.

Next lull in the conversation, Simba's looking at her with strangely soft eyes, and she looks away as she speaks, into the distance where she comes from.

"We have to go back, Simba."

He flinches, and he's the one to look away, this time.

"I don't really think that's a good idea."

Again, this strange, unfamiliarly new softness in his voice, hinting at things she isn't privy to. Things that happened while he was away, when she wasn't there. It makes him sound fragile, almost, and almost bitter, or wistful. Something Simba has no business being.

She takes a breath to calm herself, swallows it down. She's got to make him see it; if anyone can help, it's Simba – crazy ideas and boundless enthusiasm. It's her childhood playmate, who she thought was dead, and who isn't. They can do anything.

"You don't know how it's like, over there." The phrase burns her lips before she even knows she didn't say 'back home'. "Simba, it's-- it's bad," she says simply. "Really bad."

"You've got Scar," he says, and Nala can only stop and stare at him. For a split second, her vision superimposes the two fractured halves of who she's looking at, Simba in all the guileless glory of a little boy of eight, and the shadowed guilt pulling at the back of his eyes. He doesn't know; but clearly he has some idea.

"Simba, he let the mafia take control of the police."

"What--"

"There's no justice, all that's left is a mockery of order. Judges are powerless or dead, juries are bought out. The system is corrupted to the core, and everyone's too scared to do anything. Simba, if you don't come back, everything will fall apart."

Her gaze is fixed on him as though she could will him to agree. An instant floats by that she almost believes him, and then he drops his head. "I-- I can't."

"Why?"

"You wouldn't understand." He's not even looking at her. She's losing him.

"Try me!"

_What can be so awful that you won't come back?_ she doesn't have enough breath to scream. _Why won't you help us, Simba, we're your people, and you ran! We_ need _you_, she wants to shout, except that if she does she's going to cry.

"Even if I did come back, what good would it do? I'm not my father."

The derisive tone he uses is the worst thing about it. It breaks the spell. Makes her look at him with her adult eyes, and she doesn't recognize this person her best friend grew up to be.

"You _ran away_ and joined the _circus_!"

"You ran too!"

"To find help! And I found you. Together, we can do it, we can clean the police. I've got the experience, and with you to back me up-- Simba, you're our only hope."

_He lied_, she might add. _He said you'd been killed and we'd been too soft, and we had to fight fire with fire, war on crime, new order, zero tolerance, all that stuff that made your father turn the TV off. He lied and we can prove it._

"It's-- it's too late. I can't go back, not now. Sometimes things happen, and you can't prevent them, and it's better this way." He sounds like he's talking to himself now, eyes lost in the vague, his whole attention turned on the inside. "Hakuna matata."

"What?"

"It's in this song Timon and Pumbaa taught me – it's like, a way of life, it means-- don't worry. Past is in the past, and you've got to let it go, there's nothing you can do."

The echo of the last word carries for far longer than seems natural.

"You're not the Simba I remember."

She sees the sting carry when he frowns. Maybe it'd give her hope if she wasn't too incensed for it. "Yeah, that's right, I'm not. You're right, you found my big secret! You happy now?"

"So what, are you gonna keep on running?"

"Well yeah!"

"_Fine!_"

She doesn't watch him when he storms off. Just catches a glimpse of hair flipping and listens to the furious stomping of his sneakers, and glares as the old poster claiming the arrival of a new circus in town.

If she didn't have so few bullets left, she'd shoot one straight between the eyes of the painted lion roaring the dates of the next show. It wouldn't achieve anything, just make her wish for the past and the innocence of children's games.


End file.
